Many peripherals to computer networks include a scanner component. One example of such a peripheral is an “All-in-one”, also known as a multifunction peripheral (MFP) in that it has the capability to perform the multiple functions of scanning hardcopy documents, copying, and printing. Another example is a digital network copier that scans in documents from an automatic document feeder, does high volume copying, and has the capabilities of binding, collating, folding, stacking, stapling, stitching, edge-trimming, paginating, and printing on substrates of varied composition. Each of these peripherals, when in communication with an interconnecting network, can also be described as being a digital transmitter device. A digital transmitter device typically has an input device (e.g. a keyboard), a display, a scanner, and an output device. The output device of the digital transmitter device can be for sending a facsimile or an electronic mail message (e-mail). A digital transmitter device need not have a printer.
In an exemplary scanning operation, a hardcopy of a document or other physical object can be presented to the scanner portion of a digital transmitter device. After scanning, the digital transmitter device transforms the scanned image into a digital representation. If the digital transmitter device has a printer, the digital representation can be rendered to the printer to produce one or more hardcopies. If the digital transmitter device has facsimile transmission capabilities and a network over which to transmit a facsimile, the digital transmitter device can render the digital representation of the scanned image into a facsimile image that can be transmitted over the network to a predetermined or input facsimile telephone number.
In an exemplary digital transmitting operation, a hardcopy of a document or other physical object can be presented to the scanner portion of a digital transmitter device. After scanning, the digital transmitter device transforms the scanned image into a digital representation that is then saved in a data format, such as in a bit map data format or in a Portable Document Format (PDF). Electronic messaging can be used to send an electronic mail (e-mail) message from the digital transmitter device with an attachment of the digitized representation in the data format. The e-mail message can be sent to recipients over an interconnecting network, where the recipients have an e-mail address that a user manually enters at the digital transmitter device or that a user specifies using a predefined list of recipient e-mail addresses that can be stored in a memory of the digital transmitter device.
A hardcopy of a document that is to be scanned may need to be modified so that the resultant scanned document will contain the modifications. For instance, a user may wish to add a text message or a symbol to the hardcopy of the document. To do so, a softcopy of the document is edited using a document processing application. Then, a hardcopy of the edited document is output for scanning. There is a need for a scanner-based device, such as a digital transmitter device, with the flexibility to allow a user to modify a document at the scanner-based device without having to edit a softcopy of the document on another computing device.